this must be what going mad feels like
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: "Yeah, absolutely, let's find a ladder up to the haunted attic in the empty library at three-thirty in the morning all alone when no one knows to look for our bodies when we don't turn up tomorrow. I see no flaw in this plan." —-academy-era fitzsimmons go on an impromptu ghost-hunt. pure halloween-y fluff.


**a/n**: i quibbled about whether to label this as a university au or as an academy-era fic because there's nothing that specifically says shield but there's nothing that specifically excludes it? i finally decided on academy-era so that i can put it in the same 'verse as 'two negatives make a positive' and turn these into a series of interconnected one-shots. however, that fic doesn't need to be read to understand this.

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The text _should_ wake her up, she _should_ be asleep at this god-forsaken hour, but her old troubles with insomnia have reared their ugly head in the haze of exam-season anxiety — even though she has no exams tomorrow and thus should be sleeping like an angelic babe — and so she's sitting on her couch, marathoning _Firefly_ for what is at least the eighth time, when he texts her.

_I think the library is haunted._

Jemma blinks.

_1. Ghosts do not exist. 2. What on Earth are you doing in the library at 3:17 in the morning?_

The next text arrives within two minutes —

_1. Prove it. 2. I forgot that I have an exam at nine tomorrow and I think it'll be the end of me. If the tortured spirit of a murdered librarian doesn't get to me first._

She rolls her eyes.

_The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person attempting to refute it, ergo, you must prove to me that ghosts exist, not the other way around._

Barely over a minute later:

_Then come to the library._

She hesitates, looking from her phone to her state of dress to "the Hero of Canton" playing in the background and then back to her phone, and finally sighs.

And this is how Jemma Simmons — proud rationalist, no-nonsense _Jemma Simmons_ — ends up on an impromptu ghost hunt at three-thirty in the morning.

.

"You _made_ an EMF meter?"

"What?" Fitz cries, sounding personally offended. "I'm an engineering genius, did you think I couldn't?"

"Of course you _can_," she drawls, rolling her eyes. "I just don't understand why you felt it was _necessary._ Or where you got the supplies."

"It was the only rational solution," he replies matter-of-factly. "And the lab is just next door."

She sighs and shakes her head. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Never ever leave my side," he says, _almost_ sarcastically. "But right now, help me find a ghost."

"All right," she sighs, shrugging. "Let's find out what's causing the phenomena."

"Right, the murdered librarian."

"You cannot go into an experiment having already decided what the results will be," she counters sharply, and he has the presence of mind to look a bit sheepish. But he also looks like he's been slowly going mad in the dead-silent library at an awful hour of the night with nothing but textbooks for company, so she's willing to cut him a little slack. "What has been happening, and where?"

"Over here," he says, waving her to follow him around to the stacks near where all of his notes are sprawled haphazardly over a table. "I keep hearing footsteps from the ceiling around here," he starts, and she scoffs.

"_Footsteps_, Fitz? Honestly?"

"And!" he goes on loudly, giving her an admonishing look. "Every time I hear the footsteps, there's this hellish growling noise right before and it gets _significantly_ colder while they get closer."

"You're sure it's not the central air coming on?"

"It's December, Simmons."

"You're sure it's not the heater going off?"

He blinks, as though that genuinely hadn't occurred to him. Considering how long it's clearly been since he slept, it probably hasn't.

"Okay," he grumbles, "I will concede that that is, _potentially,_ an explanation for that _single_ aspect of this haunting. But explain the timing of the footsteps and the temperature happening at the same time."

"Maybe someone upstairs is turning the heater off and on."

"_Upstairs?_" he asks incredulously, eyebrows raised. "We're on the top floor, Simmons, what lunatic architect would put the central air unit in the attic?"

"You're _absolutely_ positive that the footsteps are coming from — " she starts, but gets cut off by a rumbling noise and, subsequently, the very footsteps he's talking about, and they both look up.

It _is_ suddenly a lot colder.

He fumbles with the EMF meter and it starts going off, pretty intensely.

She mentally shakes herself for getting unnerved; the atmosphere in the empty, dimly-lit library is undoubtedly creepy, and it doesn't help that all she's got for company is someone who couldn't sit through _Poltergeist._

"What was that you were saying?" he whispers fearfully, and she places her hands on her hips with a bit more confidence than she feels.

"Well, let's go check it out," she says, shrugging. "I'm sure there's stairs or a ladder or something."

"Yeah, absolutely, let's find a ladder up to the haunted attic in the empty library at three-thirty in the morning all alone when no one knows to look for our bodies when we don't turn up tomorrow. I see no flaw in this plan."

She glares.

_"You're_ the one who dragged me out of bed to come ghost-hunt with you."

There's a beat. "What episode were you on?"

She makes a face, then sighs and admits begrudgingly, "Jaynestown."

"Exactly."

"Well, what did you intend to do?" she challenges, changing the subject with a bit of shame. "You brought me over here to hunt ghosts but now you don't want to actually go up there and look for them. I love you, Fitz, but I did _not_ come all the way out here in the cold just to sit with you in the library."

He's watching her in an odd, slightly-wounded and slightly-embarrassed way that calls up the thought of _he really did just want me here with him, didn't he?_ but she banishes it determinedly.

"Fine," he mutters, cringing. "Let's look in the attic."

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The access to the library's attic is, indeed, a ladder mounted to the wall in a maintenance closet and, for a moment, they both stand at the foot of it, looking up at the trapdoor and (at least in Jemma's case) regretting the life choices that have brought them to this moment.

"I think it's locked," he says quietly.

"One way to find out," she shrugs.

It is not, in fact, locked.

She had kind of been hoping that it would be — it is very, _very_ dark up there, and very, _very_ cold, and she would really rather not do any part of this.

But instead of just deciding to take Fitz and go back to her flat and make two cups of tea and maybe help him study, she pulls out her phone and uses it as a flashlight.

It doesn't make the attic any less creepy.

"Well, come on, then," she says, glancing back down at him, where he looks just as dismayed at the unlocked door as she feels.

He takes a deep breath and, with great trepidation, follows her up the ladder.

They've only taken a few steps forward when they hear an indistinct rumbling noise that the unnerved-by-the-atmosphere part of her _swears_ involves a voice and the rational part of her says is probably just the heater coming on.

"Did you hear that?" Fitz asks fervently, and she shrugs in dismissal.

"The heater coming back on. Supports my theory that the cold spot is caused by it going off."

"Do your heaters _often_ yell at you to get out in scary demonic voices?"

"You're being melodramatic. There was no voice, and if there was…" She takes several steps forward in spite of Fitz hastily grabbing her arm in a sweet but misguided attempt to protect her from the ghost. "If there was some presence in here telling us to leave, and it _wasn't_ simply the heater, it would try again, yes?"

"Don't provoke it, woman!"

"The whole _point_ is to find out if it's real," she insists. "Set your phone to record, we'll see if we hear or see anything."

He does, and she takes another couple of steps.

"Hello?" she calls out. "Is there a spirit here? If so, can you give us a sign?" They wait for about a full minute, but nothing happens. She turns to him, shrugging. "See? Heater."

"Or it senses that you're not taking its threat seriously, and it's saving up all its ghost-energy to _claw our faces off_."

"Oh, would you stop with the — "

It chooses this moment to do its growling thing again, curiously in the exact same way as both times before.

"You honestly believe that's a heater?"

There's a pause, then footsteps heading toward them… also in the exact same cadence of the footsteps from before.

A suspicion forms.

_"No,"_ Fitz says, grabbing her by the arm and trying to push her back to the ladder. _"No,_ we're leaving, sorry for — _Jemma!"_

She twists away from him and goes toward the footsteps, scanning the ground carefully.

"Jemma, listen to me — "

"Ah-_hah!_" she proclaims, turning proudly and holding up the iPod in its dock. "Senior prank."

He's quiet for a long moment before lamely muttering, "Oh."

She turns it off and the footsteps abruptly stop.

"It _was_ a good one, though," she replies, walking back over to him and patting him on the arm — poor boy must feel stupid for falling for it. "I was getting a bit frightened myself."

"Were you."

She ignores his surly disbelief and starts down the ladder. "Now that _that's_ taken care of," she says, hopping down and turning back to him as he joins her at the floor, "pack up and go get some sleep."

He sighs heavily and leans back against the wall. "I still have that exam…" he groans.

"Well… then pack up and come back to my flat," she offers, delicately-casual. "I'll make tea. It's not as if I'm sleeping anyway," she adds, with a carefully-careless shrug.

She's actually quite exhausted, and the thought of crawling into bed is so, _so_ inviting.

But she also, somewhat traitorously, kind of likes the thought of curling up on the couch with him and a cup or three of Earl Grey and helping him study.

"Right, okay," he replies, a bit awkwardly, slinking out of the maintenance closet like a puppy with his tail between his legs. "Sorry for dragging you all the way out here."

She shrugs and smiles. "What are friends for?"

.

They both fall asleep on the couch around six, in a sprawled-out, tangled-up-and-fighting-for-space-with-papers-stuck-to-your-face way, and Fitz doesn't wake up until ten-thirty, groaning when he sees the time.

"What are the odds I can convince Dr. Sirola that ghosts made me miss his exam?" he mumbles, face-down on the couch, apparently having given up on life in general.

"Sirola?" she says, stifling a yawn and debating the merits of just falling back asleep across his back. She decides that they are many. "Good luck."

He groans again, and falls back asleep.


End file.
